4 ms·
> And reinforces the notion of a priest class, upon which amateurs, encountering the same, should abandon their labors and despair. The priests are mathematica
by pravus 3y ago
> And reinforces the notion of a priest class, upon which amateurs, encountering the same, should abandon their labors and despair.
The priests are mathematical algorithms and their judgements are based purely on the ability of candidate algorithms to perform at the current standard or higher. There are no "code mages" in crypto. Anyone is free to contribute.
What you need to understand as an amateur coming into the field is that there are already rigidly tested standards that people depend on and have spent many, many hours thinking very critically about to ensure they are mathematically sound. At this point there are extremely high expectations for minimum levels of entropic distribution.
This is not an art project. New ideas must absolutely perform at a higher standard before anyone will even consider it. You are competing with what exists today and it will be 100% on you to prove that you are setting a higher standard. Everyone will follow you if you can prove this, I assure you.
- keepamovin 3y agoThat’s not really true, the priests are people. This confuses (or may just respond to only one of) two things I’m saying: field is kept artificially weakened by the priests; and new designs by outsiders are deliberately kept out. These are connected. What you’re talking about it seems is just genuine competence and performance. I’m fine with that. I’m okay to compete. But it’s not just competition we’re dealing with, it’s artificial bias, designed to keep the field weak. With crypto hashes it’s more than just entropy: there’s many hashes that sit at the top of good entropy performance regarding smhasher results, but that’s not enough for crypto: you need analysis. And for analysis you need experts. But if i was worried about just competing on performance, which I’m not (many of my hashes have excellent entropy results), then your piece world be encouraging, it’s a good pep piece! Well done!
- msla 3y agoYou haven't proven that there are better designs out there being kept down by the priesthood, just waved your hands in the direction of Grand Conspiracy and anointed Bruce Schneier a member in that supposed priesthood. The thing is, cryptography isn't kept obscure. It's a mathematical discipline welded to the practical discipline of actually writing software, but so are other topics in that part of CS, such as compression and formal verification. But here's the nub of my point: It is hard, though, and it's harder than it looks, and this matters more for cryptography than compression because of the things people do with cryptography. If you design a bum compression algorithm, you make files you can't really decompress and you get discouraged. If you make a bum encryption algorithm, and you get all excited and actually use it for something important, and it's easy to break, well, you might get a lot worse than discouraged. Major companies have been bitten by this. Is your algorithm better than HDCP? Probably not. You know what happened to HDCP? Yeah. Intel wishes it had taken the kind of advice any new cryptographer gets about not taking their own inventions too seriously.
- keepamovin 3y agoSorry about my late reply! I've been very busy. So, basically, nobody would have any interest in preventing an explosion of new strong cryptography is that right?
- msla 3y ago> So, basically, nobody would have any interest in preventing an explosion of new strong cryptography is that right? Not really.